"John, we already have Geraldo to make an ass of himself  that
job is already taken. You (and your ilk) are adding to global warming by
spewing this hot air from your pucker brush." Then came: "Boy when you sell
out, you really sell out don't you ... What a sh-t bag you've turned into."
And another writes: "All of the cow flatulence in the world can't equal the
effect of the odiferous steam rising from the pile of bull that you lay
down." Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

The e-mails I got were quite similar, because they're based on
the same critical web page  sometimes "based on" as in "copied": One
person even forwarded me my own photograph. The web page calls my column
"misleading" because "studies by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1996 and 2001, and a 2001 National Academy of
Sciences report, commissioned by the Bush administration, have recognized
global climate change. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the Union
of Concerned Scientists both also note a 'strong consensus' among climate
researchers that global warming is a scientific reality."

Sounds devastating, as if I had ignored basic science, but when
I discussed Michael Crichton's argument that we needn't worry about global
warming, I didn't deny that warming was a "scientific reality." Crichton
doesn't deny it. The earth has warmed about one degree in the past 100
years. Climate changes . It always has. I reported on
the real warming trend in my TV special, "Tampering With Nature." The real
question is whether the warming is a "crisis," and whether trying to "fix"
it will help or just wreck the lives of the poor.

Still, by citing scientific reports, the critical web page
implies that Crichton and I have the science wrong. It's a clever way to
smear.

As for the "Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the Union
of Concerned Scientists," they belong more to the Left than to science. The
key word in "Union of Concerned Scientists" isn't "Scientists"  you don't
need any particular degree or experience to join  but "Concerned," and the
concerns in question are decidedly left wing. Its own website reveals that
it developed out of a campaign to make students think that strengthening the
American military was an illegitimate use of technology.

Stan Duncan, who at least bothered to paraphrase the smear site,
complains, "You highlighted Crichton's view that climate scientists have an
incentive to exaggerate global warming in order to win grants. But you did
not mention that the inverse is true: Many global warming skeptics receive
generous funding to downplay the problem  for example, from energy
companies with a stake in opposing regulation of fossil fuel emissions."

Sounds like the skeptics are all doing it for money. But while
some of those scientists do get money from the energy industry  that is,
from people who make their living providing products on which nearly
everything we do depends  it's nowhere near as "generous" as the millions
the scaremongers collect. And the scientists tend to get the funding after their research led them to skepticism. Many get no
industry funds. Suggesting corruption is a just another smear.

The inspiration for the hate mail is a group called "Media
Matters for America." The man behind it is David Brock. Brock first made his
reputation fighting viciously for the right wing: He published a book called
"The Real Anita Hill." Now he fights viciously for the Left.

Thirty years ago this month, Newsweek reported: "There are
ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change
dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food
production  with serious political implications for just about every
nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps
only 10 years from now." The headline? "The Cooling World." That's right:
Just 30 years ago, scaremongers were telling us about global
cooling . The alarmists never stop. Maybe the key issue isn't
science. Maybe they just want us to be "concerned."

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